


Self, Preserve

by RosemarysBabysitter (TashaElizabeth)



Series: Goretober Prompts [17]
Category: Professional Wrestling
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 13:58:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12533124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TashaElizabeth/pseuds/RosemarysBabysitter
Summary: You're waiting backstage for your match to start. Goretober Prompt: Before the Gore





	Self, Preserve

You think, _this is going to hurt._

There isn’t any trepidation in it. No reluctance or fear; it's quite matter of fact. _This,_ you think, _is going to hurt._ It always hurts, every single time. You made peace with that a decade ago. When you were a kid (you're still a kid, really, but when you were a shorter kid) you had a t-shirt with an obnoxious Nike symbol on the back and the motto “Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body” on the front. You used to wear it to the track, when you were just starting to think about your body like a tool, like a system that could be inventoried and improved. It isn’t true.

You’re winding tape over your knuckles.

Pain isn’t anything, not really. It’s a flash moment, an impression. You can’t remember it when it's gone, not really. At the moment it happens it invades the whole of your mind and takes you elsewhere, somewhere sightless and soundless and thinly aired. But you don’t stay there. 

_That,_ you say afterward, _hurt a lot._ Or even _that felt like I got hit by a truck. That felt like a house fell on me. That felt like someone took red hot wires and drove them into both my kidneys and twisted and twisted until they could lockpick my spine._

That doesn’t mean anything. That isn’t the same as the feeling.

The tape still makes your forearms look skinny. You’re not sure how you feel about that. You’re not sure how you feel about your looks in general. You don’t want to care about it. _Mick Foley probably doesn’t care too much about how he looks,_ you want to say, but you don’t really know. It’s not like you ever asked him. You still have difficulty forming complete, cogent sentences around anyone you had a t-shirt of in grade school.

Actually, Mankind was a lunch box and by the time you found it at the Goodwill, it was pretty scuffed and battered.

When you were a shorter kid you used to come home scuffed and battered a lot. Your mom would say, “you look like you fell of a ladder.” She doesn’t say that anymore. You have demonstrated time and time again that you can fall off a ladder and still look TV perfect. It’s all in the arrangement of the muscles on your face. You can do it without thinking. You can do it while you are in the elsewhere.

You stand up, adjust your kneepads. God save us all from the curse of wandering kneepads. Someone calls your name and you step forward, bouncing a little on your toes. Your muscles are already warm. Your muscles are now things that you have to warm and cool, like a tube television. 

There was a time in your life when you used to sit around on a ratty sofa, sipping beer and eating twizzlers until it was time to go on. You didn’t ever think about it until you were getting tossed face down onto a barrier fence or a ring rope and had to swallow down the uprising vomit before it shot past your tightly closed mouth and came out your nose.

 _That,_ you think with a smile, _hurt a lot._

And so will this. There isn’t a ladder out there but there is a table to go through, there are steel chairs. You get asked about the chairs a lot, especially in bars. “What’s the trick to getting hit with a chair?”

 _There isn’t a trick,_ you say, _you just get hit._ They never believe you. That’s okay. 

The nice girl with the clipboard and headset whose name you can’t remember raises a hand at you. You arrange your face. This is going to hurt. You’re going elsewhere, at least for a little while. That’s okay. It’s never stopped you before.


End file.
